Road Warrior: Rutherford gets an earful from gap in Route 3 wall

By Cichowski, John

The Record

Kathleen Catlett was treated last week to an outdoor concert in Lyndhurst that she didn't attend. The Catletts live in Rutherford way across busy Route 3 from Lyndhurst, yet music and crowd noise easily reached their Lincoln Avenue home.

Shirley Metts and Kathleen Catlett with a DOT rendering showing no open space in sound wall.

"It seemed as if my neighbors were having a party," she said. "This never used to happen."

Like the Catletts, Bill Metts and his wife have been having trouble sleeping lately after living 35 years on Lincoln.

"Traffic noise from Route 3 reaches our neighborhood louder than ever because it bounces off sound walls on the Lyndhurst side," explained the retired accountant.

Loud, nighttime noise is exactly what Metts sought to prevent more than a decade ago when he was named to a borough committee that was organized to address neighborhood concerns about a big Route 3 widening project undertaken by the state Department of Transportation. After much heated debate, including a tally taken from a neighborhood questionnaire, the Rutherford Mayor and Council agreed in 2004 to allow sound walls similar to those approved for the Lyndhurst side of the highway.

But as Metts, Catlett and their sleepless neighbors will attest, Rutherford's sound walls, which are still under construction, contain a nearly 80-foot gap just where Lincoln Avenue ends at Marginal Road.

"I feel betrayed," Metts said. "This isn't what anyone wanted."

Keeping neighborhoods peaceful along noisy highways has never been easy, and the noisy debate along the Route 3 corridor is no exception. Arguments in Rutherford date back nearly 20 years. Some residents believe they were muscled into accepting these barriers only because neighboring Lyndhurst had done so.

"If we refused, we thought the noise would bounce back to us from the Lyndhurst walls," Metts said. "But it's happening anyway."

On Tuesday night, angry neighbors descended on Borough Hall to present a petition that 32 of them had signed.

"The present DOT plan to exclude a sound barrier at the foot of Lincoln Avenue is a considerable breach of trust with the town," it said. "Pictures of such a design were not presented to citizens who voted for the sound barrier."

Indeed, many of the documents, maps, artist renderings and DOT brochures kept by Metts over the years showed no open space in the wall at Lincoln as it appears on a construction map at the agency's website.

"But plans kept evolving," he added. "There were several proposals for gaps at different locations for on-ramps to Route 3 west.

Neighbors had expected overlapping walls to allow cars to enter the westbound on-ramp with walls on both sides — a design similar to one on the Lyndhurst side at Delafield and Park avenues.

But a DOT spokesman, Stephen Schapiro, said there wasn't enough room to duplicate that configuration at Lincoln Avenue and Marginal Road.

"In response to community concerns about moving the ramp, the final design kept the on-ramp in the same location as it was prior to construction," Schapiro said.

Before construction, however, noise levels were somewhat mitigated by trees along both sides of the highway, Catlett said. "Once the sound walls were built in Lyndhurst, it acted like a megaphone."

"The DOT fooled us," said John Dull, whose house sits at the corner of Lincoln and Marginal. "You should have seen the beautiful pictures they presented at community meetings showing huge red walls and shrubbery that looked like gardens. Nowhere did it show a big gap like this."

Actually, one early design called for a highway entrance to be across from Dull's driveway on Marginal Road about 50 yards east of the gap's current location.

"Years ago, I wrote a letter to the town and the newspapers offering to sell my home to the state if the entrance ramp went there," said Dull, who signed the petition. "I got a pamphlet in the mail explaining how to make a request, but nothing came of it. So, if somebody thinks I'm the culprit here, they're falling for a smokescreen."

The petition calls for borough officials, including the mayor and the council, to "pursue immediate rectification [including] overlapping walls or elimination of the entrance ramp at Lincoln."

At Tuesday night's meeting, the Borough Council agreed to ask the DOT to reevaluate the area and provide options. Borough Attorney Phillip LaPorta said the agency appeared willing to make some adjustments.

But with no room for overlapping walls at the Lincoln Avenue entrance ramp, remaining options appear limited — unless the ramp is eliminated entirely.

"There are two entrances that provide access to Route 3 westbound," Schapiro said in an email, "and Rutherford wanted to keep both open."

Road Warrior stops by here Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email him at cichowski@northjersey.com

Road Warrior: Rutherford gets an earful from gap in Route 3 wall

Kathleen Catlett was treated last week to an outdoor concert in Lyndhurst that she didn't attend. The Catletts live in Rutherford way across busy Route 3 from Lyndhurst, yet music and crowd noise easily reached their Lincoln Avenue home.

"It seemed as if my neighbors were having a party," she said. "This never used to happen."

Like the Catletts, Bill Metts and his wife have been having trouble sleeping lately after living 35 years on Lincoln.

"Traffic noise from Route 3 reaches our neighborhood louder than ever because it bounces off sound walls on the Lyndhurst side," explained the retired accountant.

Loud, nighttime noise is exactly what Metts sought to prevent more than a decade ago when he was named to a borough committee that was organized to address neighborhood concerns about a big Route 3 widening project undertaken by the state Department of Transportation. After much heated debate, including a tally taken from a neighborhood questionnaire, the Rutherford Mayor and Council agreed in 2004 to allow sound walls similar to those approved for the Lyndhurst side of the highway.

But as Metts, Catlett and their sleepless neighbors will attest, Rutherford's sound walls, which are still under construction, contain a nearly 80-foot gap just where Lincoln Avenue ends at Marginal Road.

"I feel betrayed," Metts said. "This isn't what anyone wanted."

Keeping neighborhoods peaceful along noisy highways has never been easy, and the noisy debate along the Route 3 corridor is no exception. Arguments in Rutherford date back nearly 20 years. Some residents believe they were muscled into accepting these barriers only because neighboring Lyndhurst had done so.

"If we refused, we thought the noise would bounce back to us from the Lyndhurst walls," Metts said. "But it's happening anyway."

On Tuesday night, angry neighbors descended on Borough Hall to present a petition that 32 of them had signed.

"The present DOT plan to exclude a sound barrier at the foot of Lincoln Avenue is a considerable breach of trust with the town," it said. "Pictures of such a design were not presented to citizens who voted for the sound barrier."

Indeed, many of the documents, maps, artist renderings and DOT brochures kept by Metts over the years showed no open space in the wall at Lincoln as it appears on a construction map at the agency's website.

"But plans kept evolving," he added. "There were several proposals for gaps at different locations for on-ramps to Route 3 west.

Neighbors had expected overlapping walls to allow cars to enter the westbound on-ramp with walls on both sides — a design similar to one on the Lyndhurst side at Delafield and Park avenues.

But a DOT spokesman, Stephen Schapiro, said there wasn't enough room to duplicate that configuration at Lincoln Avenue and Marginal Road.

"In response to community concerns about moving the ramp, the final design kept the on-ramp in the same location as it was prior to construction," Schapiro said.

Before construction, however, noise levels were somewhat mitigated by trees along both sides of the highway, Catlett said. "Once the sound walls were built in Lyndhurst, it acted like a megaphone."

"The DOT fooled us," said John Dull, whose house sits at the corner of Lincoln and Marginal. "You should have seen the beautiful pictures they presented at community meetings showing huge red walls and shrubbery that looked like gardens. Nowhere did it show a big gap like this."

Actually, one early design called for a highway entrance to be across from Dull's driveway on Marginal Road about 50 yards east of the gap's current location.

"Years ago, I wrote a letter to the town and the newspapers offering to sell my home to the state if the entrance ramp went there," said Dull, who signed the petition. "I got a pamphlet in the mail explaining how to make a request, but nothing came of it. So, if somebody thinks I'm the culprit here, they're falling for a smokescreen."